Archives For Pluralism

Unleash the Hounds! (Link Roundup)

Jason Pitzl-Waters —  November 26, 2012 — 7 Comments

There are lots of articles and essays of interest to modern Pagans out there, sometimes more than I can write about in-depth in any given week. So The Wild Hunt must unleash the hounds in order to round them all up.

Pagan Federation banner.

Pagan Federation banner.

correspondences

Correspondences journal.

  • A new academic journal of Western Esotericism, Correspondences, has been announced.  Quote: “By providing a wider forum of debate regarding issues and currents in Western esotericism than has previously been possible, Correspondences is committed to publishing work of a high academic standard as determined by a peer-review process, but does not require academic credentials as prerequisite for publication. Students and non-affiliated academics are encouraged to join established scholars in submitting insightful, well-researched articles that offer new ideas, positions, or information to the field.” First issues is due in June, call for papers, here.
  • Mars Hill pastor Mark Driscoll is a thuggish Christian power-tripper who thinks he’s edgy because he writes about having sex with his wife. He’d be a huge joke were it not for his rampant (almost cultish) popularity in the Pacific Northwest. Now, the Seattle mega-pastor is attacking Twilight (because he’s oh-so-relevant) for sinking teen girls into Paganism and the occult. Quote: “…girls the same age of my 15-year-old daughter are talking about “awakening,” which is their word for converting to paganism (like the Christian word “born again”). In a perverted twist on Communion, their sacraments include the giving of your own blood by becoming a “donor.” This is entirely pagan.” No, this is entirely inane. Despite his Seattle-denizen ambient hipster facade, Driscoll is your typical evangelical social conservative who pearl-clutches over the thought of Paganism.
  • The creepy UK Pagan who was caught with a semi-undressed underage girl in the woods has narrowly avoided being put on sex offenders registry after the judge decided that the “sexual element” wasn’t sexual enough to justify his inclusion. Quote: “Sheriff Noel McPartlin said it was ‘hard to escape the view that him being naked in the room with the girl might suggest a sexual element [...] I am a bit hesitant but I do not think the sexual element is significant enough to justify placing him on the register.’” 
  • As a counter-point to the hysteria of Mark Driscoll, Richard Stearns, president of World Vision (the largest evangelical Christian relief organization in the world), suggests a culture-war cease fire between Christians and non-Christians. Quote: “We need to find a way to live in a pluralistic society without engaging in an arms race with those who are not Christians.”
  • Indian Country Today Media Network reports that a coalition of Native American spiritual leaders have signed a declaration opposing Canada’s oil sands and the new Tar Sands pipeline being proposed. Quote: “The statement, signed by more than 20 spiritual chiefs at a Sundance this summer in South Dakota, includes members of the Lakota, Navajo, Apache, Mohawk, Dine, Aztec and Ojibwe nations, spanning much of Turtle Island.”
  • Riordons Witchcraft Emporium in Australia wants you to know that they have a screening process: “Are they a borderline schizophrenic … or somehow mad? There are many vulnerable people in the world and you don’t want to make their situation worse.” Also profiled in the article is the shop Spellbox. Both establishments take pains to stress that they aren’t like Harry Potter, and they aren’t “New Age.”
  • Counter-cultural magazine Arthur has announced its return, featuring many of the magickal luminaries that made it such a hit in the first place. Quote: “Arthur’s gang of idiots, know-it-alls and village explainers are back, from Bull Tonguers Byron Coley & Thurston Moore to radical ecologist Nance Klehm to trickster activists Center for Tactical Magic to Defend Brooklyn’s socio-political commentator Dave Reeves to a host of new, fresh-faced troublemakers, edited by ol’ fool Jay Babcock and art directed by Yasmin Khan.” I suspect that this news will excite a certain portion of my readership.

That’s it for now! Feel free to discuss any of these links in the comments, some of them I may expand into longer posts as needed.

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Minority Religions, National Politics, and our Pluralistic Promise

Jason Pitzl-Waters —  September 4, 2012 — 69 Comments

Right now the United States is immersed in a flurry of political wrangling, our two major parties wrapping up, or about to begin, major conventions that they hope will sell their candidate to an increasingly disaffected electorate. For those of us who exist on the margins of America’s tapestry of faith and religion, it can seem doubly alienating. A celebration of what we are not.

Certainly there have been inroads, the Republican National Convention invited a Sikh to give an opening invocation (albeit one you could only see on C-SPAN), and the Democratic National Convention has enshrined marriage equality in their national platform, but for the most part these events are exercises in affirming a certain bland, comfortable, (mostly) non-controversial all-American idiom (from different political lenses, to be sure). They are not, despite what activists from both sides desire, moments that dare confront or change the status quo. No one will be forced to confront, as Brian Jay Stanley was, their own prejudices or assumptions.

“Before college I was a skeptic and rationalist toward every religion except my own, Christianity. Like most of humanity, I had believed the religion I’d heard first, and on its authority dismissed all the religions I’d heard second. Seeing Muslims wearing turbans or Hindus bindis, I thought the oddity of their customs proved the error of their beliefs. Studying all faiths in one class in college, however, I saw my religion from the outside and realized that the rites of my Sundays — warbling choirs and smocked babies dipped in silver fonts and bread as the body of Christ — were as curious as what I had disparaged as myths. In class discussions I sometimes unwittingly revealed assumptions that I thought were axioms, and would read surprise in the eyes of a Hare Krishna or Bahai. My notion of normal was an accident of my birth and upbringing. Whomever I saw as strange saw me as strange. I had raised a doubtful brow at Buddhists bowing to golden statues, even as I prayed weekly to a crucified first-century Jew, not realizing that either all religions are bizarre or none is.”

As Jeffrey Weiss at RealClearReligion notes, the slow demographic shift away from institutional faiths, the rise of “nones,” those claiming to particular religion, have yet to be eagerly courted by either party, particularly the Republicans.

“Where religion came up in Tampa last week, at least among the best-known and prime-time speakers, it was mostly in reference to a fairly specific notion of God. The speakers used language most familiar to a particular reading of Christianity. To be fair, much of the language would also have been familiar in the mid-1700s, as America’s founders crafted their exquisite balance of freedoms and responsibilities. But today, as many as one American in five belongs to the religious “Nones,” depending on the polls you read. That’s a huge leap from a couple of decades ago. And members of this group are far more likely to describe themselves as political independents than people who say they ascribe to any particular religion. They may have been more turned off than inspired by the way the Republicans wove religion and politics together.”

This isn’t a uniquely Republican problem, as the Democrats aren’t exactly eager to give non-Christians a prime-time voice. Both seek to keep Christians in their base, while hoping their policy stances will appeal to non-Christians who will overlook all the monotheistic God talk. Change, it seems, happens in frustratingly small increments. No one is forced to deal with people “who don’t have the slightest similarity to us,” even within the “big tent” of our national parties, and that’s a shame. That said, CNN believes the Democratic convention will be less “faith-y” (ie less Christian) than four years ago, but it’s all speculation at this point.

Happening in the shadow of the “values voter” election of 2004, the 2008 Democratic convention was something of a faith fest, especially when it came to evangelicals. Convention roles went to the Rev. Joel Hunter, a megapastor from Florida, and best-selling Christian author Don Miller. This year, some religious activists are quietly wondering if the convention will come off as more secular. Hunter, who remains close to Obama, is skipping Charlotte. “There’s no reason for me to be there,” he told us. “My relationship with the president is pastoral and not political.”

Let me be clear, this is not a “both parties are the same” argument, I think there are clear and definable differences in policy between the Democrats and Republicans. I trust my readers are intelligent enough to discern where their interests lie in those matters, as The Wild Hunt doesn’t endorse candidates. However, both parties do have a “religion” problem, and it isn’t the problem of appealing to Christians of various inclinations.

The problem is that both parties have been slow to embrace real pluralism and religious diversity in their one prime-time 3-day infomercial to the American people (and in certain senses, the world). This may not be a problem for this election cycle, but it is increasingly going to be an issue as that slow demographic shift keeps on shifting, and more states start to be evenly divided between Christians on one side, with “nones” and “others” on the other. The “unchurched” (non-Christian) vote is going to be a real thing in the years to come, and we’re a frustratingly diverse demographic. Asian-Americans are a key growth point for non-Abrahamic religions across the country, while a whopping 12% of state residents are adherents of a New Age, Pagan, or esoteric faiths in Colorado, with another 20% fitting into the “none” category. These are growing populations that can’t be ignored forever.

Christian adherents as percentage of state population (2010).

Christian adherents as percentage of state population (2010).

Both parties need to embrace the “communion of strangers,” and realize that pluralism is the core value regarding religion in America. Both parties need to either embrace the full tapestry of faith in their conventions, or they need to stop pandering to religious groups entirely. That isn’t so strange a notion, as it wasn’t until our modern era that faith became so politicized that we injected it into the very fabric of partisan politics. Of course, it used to be a given that we were all Christians, and that all “others” lived here by our sufferance. Still, one direction or another needs to be taken, or the parties will soon find themselves catering to ever-smaller slices of the demographic pie until it will a case of change or die. My hope is that secularism can stop being a dirty word, and we can simply get down to the business of rationally hashing out our policy differences without invoking divine backing to bolster an argument. If not now, then soon.

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Tri-Faith America and American Pluralism

Jason Pitzl-Waters —  September 2, 2012 — Leave a comment

[The following is a post from The Wild Hunt archives. The Wild Hunt is on hiatus through Labor Day weekend and will return with new posts on Tuesday, September 4th.]

Despite the fact that the history of the United States is incredibly well-documented, many of us labor under various misapprehensions regarding our nation’s past. This seems especially true of America’s religious history. Lately it seems as if there’s been an inundation of pundits, amateur historians, and demagogues trying to frame us into a reductive (Protestant) Christian mold, painting a picture of harmony and piety that endured until the post-60s culture wars started raging. This sort of narrative leaves little room for religious minorities and outsiders to understand their own experiences, or draw accurate lessons from history. While recent books by Leigh Schmidt, Chas Clifton,Courtney Bender, and others, have taken the time to explore religious perspectives outside of this paradigm, there’s still a great need to deconstruct and analyze just how our current ideas about American religiosity were formed.

Kevin M. Schultz, Assistant Professor of History at the University of Illinois in Chicago, in his new book “Tri-Faith America: How Catholics and Jews Held Postwar America to Its Protestant Promise,” recounts how goodwill and interfaith groups in the early 20th century battled a rise of nativistic politics, antisemitism, and anti-Catholicism to forge the notion of a “Judeo-Christian” America and ultimately (and somewhat unintentionally) usher in a sweeping disestablishment of religion in the United States. A look at how toxic religious nativism can be avoided in favor of pluralism, and how mistrusted religious minorities navigated an America dominated by Protestant Christianity. I think Schultz’s book should be required reading, especially for religious minorities currently struggling for equal treatment in American culture. I was lucky enough to conduct an interview with Kevin M. Schultz about the book, exploring how a new religious image of America was formed in the 20th century, how religious conservatives today exploit that image, and what lessons religious minorities today can take from this period in history.

What prompted you to write “Tri-Faith America?” It certainly seem very relevant to the state of religion and politics in America today. Do you feel this is a bit of forgotten history?

When I wrote “Tri-Faith America,” I wrote it purely as a piece of history. I was interested in the debates about pluralism and “getting along” that took place during World War II, or more generally after the 1930s, when class differences dominated American politics, and before the 1960s, when the civil rights movement thrust race so dramatically into the national consciousness.

As I began to investigate the question, which was in fact not very often investigated, it became increasingly clear to me that battles between Protestants, Catholics, and Jews were vitally important to Americans of that era. These debates dominated the development of the suburbs, the Supreme Court cases, the census, what should be taught in schools, and even the make-up of Little League teams.

It was only after I discovered all these debates that I saw how they fit into the question about whether or not America is a Christian nation, a debate that, as your question suggests, is relevant to the state of religion and politics today. Many of the actors in my story were saying things like “We need a broader, more inclusive, and more accurate conception of the American nation.” Given the limits of the time, they adopted a “tri-faith” model, inviting Catholics and Jews to the table for the first time.

I think many people would be surprised at how manufactured our modern ideas of America as a “Judeo-Christian” country are, that we went from a status quo where, according to Franklin D. Roosevelt, “the Catholics and Jews are here under sufferance,” to one where the commonalities between Protestants, Catholics, and Jews were stressed and a united religious front seen as vital to our nation. It seems remarkable that interfaith and goodwill organizations were able to so quickly turn the United States away from the growing nativism of the times. I understand that WW2 was a great cultural unifier, but the momentum had begun even before that. To what do you ascribe the underlying success of this “tri-faith” effort?

First off, I think I’d disagree with the part of the question where you say “were able to so quickly turn the US away from nativism.” It took a lot of work!

But I think two things are at play in this transformation, a transformation from, to put it too simply, nativism to an acceptance of pluralism. First, and I don’t go into this much in my book, a lot of Americans were challenging the underlying structures of racism, things like the 19th century notion of the hierarchy of races, which of course always premised white Protestant superiority and then had all other groups lower in the hierarchy, with black people always at the bottom. Lots of Americans were challenging this idea in the first decades of the twentieth century–scientists, Leftist Jewish intellectuals, some progressive reformers, many folks in the labor movement of the 1930s, and my interfaith folks, who were demanding greater inclusion and a new national image.

Out of this mix arose the folks I study in the book, who worked hard to reconceptualize the predominate notion of what it meant to be an American. They went on the road, setting up little morality plays with a priest, a rabbi, and a minister on stage all jabbing each other, asking the hard questions–can a non-Catholic get to Heaven? Do Jews run the world? They went to Des Moines and Debuque. They filmed movie-shorts. Ironically, they were helped greatly by Adolf Hitler, who presented an image that Americans sought to avoid, and one way of doing so was by being tolerant of other faiths. The US Armed Forced supported it too, somewhat remarkably inviting these religious advocates on military bases all over the world, one of the only non-military groups to be given such access. Then the Cold War against those godless communists cemented the image of America as a land of religious pluralism.

So it took some time, and was the result of people working hard to create a new image of America.

One thing that struck me in your book is seeing Catholics as outsiders, as a somewhat suspect religious minority struggling to gain political and social parity with the nation’s Protestants. One quote in particular from Carlton J.H. Hayes (the first Catholic co-chairman of the National Conference of Christians and Jews) seemed particularly relevant: “I have always maintained that in this country Protestants have the major responsibility for assuring justice and true toleration to non-Protestants, not because they are Protestants but because they are [the] majority group.” With Catholics now the largest Christian denomination in the United States, I can’t imagine a prominent Catholic lay-leader repeating these words, or words very much like them. The idea of the politically dominant faiths in this country “assuring justice and true toleration” to smaller faiths now seems almost radical. Are shifts away from sentiments like these simply a by-product of success? Has tri-faith America lost the ethos of protecting religious minorities today?

Ah, but Catholics were the largest Christian denomination even then, although most Catholics take issue with the label “denomination.” Perhaps saying the largest group of Christians is better.

What changed was the nation’s perception of itself. Now, instead of having Protestants dominating the nation’s social and moral authority, most minority faiths are more or less tolerated and protected, and even to some extent endorsed. The addition of Muslim, Buddhist, and maybe soon a Wiccan chaplain in the military might be one example.

But this tolerance and pluralism came at a cost: conservatives of all stripes–Protestants, Catholics, and Jews–have seen all this tolerance as a sign of a secularizing society. The timing made this seem accurate–it began in the late 1960s and 1970s. So today, instead of having Catholics as a sizable minority demanding inclusion, now many Catholics see themselves as defending the last ramparts of Christianity and civilization. Any breech demands a response and minority faiths present a certain challenge–they might just be the camel’s nose in the tent.

An important split in post-war tri-faith unity was the differing visions of America’s religious future and the idea of pluralism. For Catholics, who were growing in prominence and influence, an “all-in” pluralism was endorsed, where every faith commingled (and competed) in the public square, but for the Jewish community, who were wary of Catholicism’s history of persecution in Europe, secularism seemed the best option. While legal efforts have raised the wall between church and state and helped bring about historic disestablishment rulings, this split over the role of religion in our public life now rages hotter than ever. Where do you think we are going? Will there be a re-establishment, or will post-war secular gains hold?

As a historian, I always hate to predict the future. And the Supreme Court’s recent decisions on religion in public life are awkward, but they do shine a little light. Basically the Supreme Court has said religious icons that are old–say, having “In God We Trust” on our money or “under God” in our pledge, both of which came in the 1950s–are okay. We’re honoring our past. But having new religious icons in public space–say, building a giant statue of the 10 Commandments in a courthouse–is a symbol of endorsement. This isn’t terribly doctrinaire or logical, but as a pragmatic decision, it makes some sense.

My notion is that as a society we will continue to create space for worshipers of all faiths, even secular humanists and atheists–and this is a direct follow up of Tri-Faith America. But alongside that, more and more people will be able to bring their religious perspective openly into the public sphere, and this won’t be automatic grounds for dismissal. The burden then, of course, is for religious people to be able to make secular arguments. The idea that same sex marriage is wrong because it contradicts your faith is fine, but why should everyone have to live to the standards of your faith? If you can create a secular argument for why same sex marriage should be outlawed, then there will be a conversation, and that’s the best we can hope for in a democracy!

While the forming of a Judeo-Christian consciousness had many benefits for future religious minority communities, most notably the idea that “there was no such thing as neutral advocacy of religion,” it also provided a language and framework for the conservative Christian activists of today. Today many of them off-handedly talk of our “Judeo-Christian” heritage, or invoke the post-war/early Cold War religious consensus as a period they’d like to return to. I was particularly taken aback by a quote from a Catholic newspaper that you highlight: “Non-Christian religious groups, prompted by the presence of many of their children in public schools, are seeking to dilute or to eliminate Christ from Christmas.” Rhetoric like that could have easily been placed in the mouth of many “keep Christ in Christmas” activists today. How much do conservative Christian activists owe to this period, and how much is their conception of history shaped by it?

Yes, I was struck by that too. A lot of the conversations I found in the archives could have happened on The Daily Show or Fox News last week. It was remarkable.

As for how much today’s conservatives owe to the formulations of middle of the twentieth century, I think the answer is “not much.” The reason is because they are ignorant of it. They think (as do lefties, I should add) that something called “Judeo-Christianity” has been around forever, when in fact it was more or less invented in the late 1930s to combat Hitler and to bring Jews into the fold of “good Americanism.” Well, the thinking then went, if we can’t be “Protestant” or even “Christian,” what’s next? Judeo-Christian? Okay, let’s go with that. It wasn’t quite this simple, but that was the progression of thought, and the effort was to increase inclusivity. Today’s conservatives, however, use “Judeo-Christian” as an exclusive term–to keep those secularists and atheists and Muslims and Hindus out–and that’s the real distinction.

As for bringing Christ back into Christmas, there is a long history to that complaint, going back to the early 20th century and basically the invention of mass marketing and advertising.

Today the splits in religion seem to be between liberal and conservative visions of America (and theology), not between Catholics, Protestants, and Jews. You note that the United State’s growing religious diversity since the 1960s has “made it difficult to refer to the United States as a ‘Judeo-Christian nation’,” though this growth hasn’t supplanted the “liberal-conservative divide.” Is America moving towards a post-Christian identity, religiously speaking, or do you think the conservative religious alliances will manage to hold back (or even reverse) this tide?

Good question, and again I hate to guess about the future. I do think it would take extraordinary circumstances for the United States to become a “Christian nation,” whatever that might mean (and few advocates bother to develop a vision). There just are too many diverse faiths in America and too many constitutional protections to kill off all our religious pluralism. Plus, if you look back to colonial Massachusetts, even those folks felt like they were living in un-Christian times. Recall that the great form of speech then was the Jeremiad. The threat of a coming American godlessness has a long, long history.

If you were to offer a lesson from the history of Tri-Faith America for religious minorities struggling today for acceptance and equal treatment, what would it be?

Histories lessons are always complicated because the events of the past happen in contexts that are very different from those that exist today. One of the things the advocates of “Tri-Faith America” did quite successfully, though, was to present a positive and forceful image of what it meant to be an American, one that made their position the obvious next step. They were fighting over the meaning of America, and they were using historical actors and historical antecedents to push their vision forward. Today’s conservatives are much better at this than today’s liberals. But religious minorities in the past have used the various languages of good Americanism to show they belong, and those arguments were very successful for the people I study too.

–

My thanks to Kevin M. Schultz for the interview, you can find ”Tri-Faith America: How Catholics and Jews Held Postwar America to Its Protestant Promise” at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Powell’s, Google, and other fine book (and e-book) sellers.

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The Air Force, and the Increasing Misuse of the Term ‘Religious Freedom’

Jason Pitzl-Waters —  June 23, 2012 — 32 Comments

“Your right to swing your arm leaves off where my right not to have my nose struck begins.” - John B. Finch, 1882

If you follow religion news these days, you can’t help but be inundated with the current debate over what, exactly, “religious freedom” means, and what its limits are. The most popular manifestation concerns Catholic opposition to new contraception guidelines set forth by the Dept. of Health and Human Services (a topic I’ve covered before), but a large number of enterprising souls have taken this proverbial football and are running as far as they can with it. The most recent effort to “protect” religious freedom comes from a consortium of 66 Republican lawmakers who have written a letter to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta asking for an investigation into “a series of steps signaling hostility towards religious freedom” by the Air Force.

The lawmakers outlined several instances where they had problems with Air Force policy, particularly a memo last year from Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz, which said that “chaplains, not commanders” should notify airmen about chaplains’ religious programs. The lawmakers wrote the memo was “suggesting that the mere mention of these programs is impermissible.” They also took issue with the suspension of a briefing that discussed Bible references, the changing of a Latin office motto that included God and removing Bibles from Air Force Inn checklists. They wrote the policy of “complete separation” between church and state is having a “chilling effect” down the chain of command.

An Air Force spokesperson responded by saying that “Airmen are free to exercise their Constitutional right to practice their religion—in a manner that is respectful of other individuals’ rights to follow their own belief systems.” Indeed, these instances the 66 Republican lawmakers are concerned about aren’t initiatives to limit religious freedom, but to instead avoid showing favoritism for any particular faith.

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz

“The Air Force’s top officer has issued a stern reminder to leaders about religion and their jobs: Don’t proselytize or show favoritism toward a particular faith. Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz sent a servicewide memo Sept. 1 cautioning leaders at all levels to balance the Constitution’s protection of religious freedom and the prohibition on government intrusion. “We have seen instances where well-meaning commanders and senior noncommissioned officers appeared to advance a particular religious view among their subordinates, calling into question their impartiality and objectivity. We can learn from these instances,” said Lt. Col. Sam Highley, Schwartz’s spokesman.”

We should also remember that these corrections aren’t happening in a vacuum, and were prompted by a culture of evangelical Christian takeover within the Air Force Academy, where blatant religious favoritism was in full and open display.

“…my son’s orientation became an opportunity for the academy to aggressively proselytize this next crop of cadets. Maj. Warren Watties led a group of 10 young, exclusively evangelical chaplains who stood shoulder to shoulder.  He proudly stated that half of the cadets attended Bible studies on Monday nights in the dormitories and he hoped to increase this number from those in his audience who were about to join their ranks.  This “invitation” was followed with hallelujahs and amens by the evangelical clergy.  I later learned from Air Force Academy chaplain MeLinda Morton, a Lutheran who was forced to observe from the choir loft, that no priest, rabbi or mainline Protestant had been permitted to participate.”

This was a major scandal for the Air Force, which, like all government bodies, isn’t supposed to favor any particular faith, and to maintain separation between Church and State. They’ve since made major efforts to make their branch of the military a place where all faiths are respected, including the building of a Pagan/Nature Religions worship area at the Air Force Academy.

Cadet Chapel Falcon Circle at the Air Force Academy

Cadet Chapel Falcon Circle at the Air Force Academy. Photo by: Jerilee Bennett / The Gazette

Sadly, these worthy efforts towards making the Air Force a place that respects all manifestations of faith is being framed as an attack on “religious freedom” by these lawmakers. For them, religious freedom means freedom for Christians to swing their theological “arms” without any regard to whose nose might be struck. When U.S. Representatives Diane Black of Tennessee, Randy Forbes of Virginia and Todd Akin of Missouri assert that “the combination of events mentioned above raises concerns that the Air Force is developing a culture that is hostile towards religion” what they mean is hostile toward unfettered Christian expression, and little else. I cannot imagine that any of the 66 lawmakers gave one thought as to what things were like for religious minorities before the recent shift in policy and tone. Religious freedom, for them, begins and ends with their conception of America as a “Judeo-Christian” nation that exists under a single, monotheistic, God.

As I’ve said before, to these Christians, government-enforced secularism isn’t a neutral ethos, but a method of attacking their faith and limiting their free expression. In the minds of these Christians “religious freedom” means, in this time of demographic dominance, the right to let the majority dictate the religious norms of a society. Any deviance from that, in limiting prayer in schools, or sectarian prayer at government meetings, is a persecution of their church. We are increasingly caught in Christianity’s own crisis over its role and purpose in a post-Christian pluralistic society, and the results aren’t always pretty. This crisis will only escalate as religious minorities continue to stand up for real equality, for their voices to be heard in the public square, and as litigation starts to reevaluate what the standards for inclusion are in government-backed religious initiatives.

Whatever valid concerns Catholics, Evangelicals, and other conservative Christians might have over religious freedom in the United States, they are continually tempered by their insistence on being the sole definer of where that concept begins and ends. No one is asking Buddhists, Pagans, Hindus, or practitioners of Native religions for their input, and in many cases the same Christian leaders and lawmakers who cry persecution are the very same who ignore our concerns, or are outright dismissive of non-Christian religious expressions.

“I don’t care what the naysayers say. This nation was founded as a Christian nation. The god of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. There is only one God. There is only one God, and his name is Jesus. I’m tired of people telling me that I can’t say those words. I’m tired of people telling us as Christians that we can’t voice our beliefs or we can’t no longer pray in public. Listen to me. If you don’t love America, and you don’t like the way we do things, I’ve got one thing to say, get out! [...] We don’t worship Buddha, we don’t worship Mohammed, we don’t worship Allah. We worship God. We worship God’s son Jesus Christ.”

To me, the Catholic Bishops and Evangelical leaders who claim to be baking the bread of freedom, produce only the taste of ashes in my mouth. Have we really forgotten that Christian Republican lawmakers as recently as 1999 tried to get the practice of Wicca banned from the military? That the Catholic Church, openly hostile to non-Christian faiths, has proposed a grand coalition of the dominant monotheisms to quash the rights of faiths and traditions who want to perform legal same-sex marriages? To my mind these are not the defenders of my religious freedom, to say the least.

If religious freedom as a concept is going to mean anything, if isn’t going to just be hollow rhetoric, then it needs to apply equally to everyone. That means creating a level playing field in the realm of government, it means not privileging the Christian majority simply because it’s a politically expedient thing to do. Sometimes it even means rolling back privileges that some have mistaken for “rights.” The problem is that far too many Christians in America have grown over fond of having no limits on their arm-swinging, and every judicial decision or law that tells them that certain noses are off-limits enrages them, and feeds into an ugly persecution complex (to the point where the majority assumes the mantle of the persecuted minority). Real religious freedom starts when groups stop twisting the concept to privilege themselves at the expense of others.

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Pagans and Jesus

Jason Pitzl-Waters —  May 24, 2012 — 165 Comments

I’m in the process of reading two very different books about modern Pagans, and how they encounter Jesus, the central (and salvic) figure in Christian religion. The nature of the dialog found in these works point to the centrality and cultural power Christianity possesses, despite claims that this dominant monotheism is endangered in any meaningful way. Perhaps there are works underway about how Christians encounter Dionysis, or how best to explain Hekate to Jesus-followers, and I just haven’t heard about them yet? In any case, I think both tomes are revealing and worth examination for anyone interested in how Pagans exist and adapt into a religious world where Jesus is ever-present, and how more sensitive and thoughtful missional Christians consider modern Pagan religions.

The first book is “Connecting Christ: How to Discuss Jesus in a World of Diverse Paths” by Paul Louis Metzger, Professor of Christian Theology and Theology of Culture at Multnomah University. Readers of my blog may find that name familiar because he co-wrote a guest post here, repudiating a harmful article conflating modern Paganism with witchcraft killings, and aruging that “Christians must learn to show respect for other belief and praxis systems by substantiating our claims and criticisms and arguing for the cogency of our own convictions on level ground also occupied by others.” This is essentially, what “Connecting Christ” does, it discusses Christianity’s relationship to other faiths on “level ground.”

“This book promotes evangelism and dialogue, not one to the exclusion of the other. And as such it also promotes the need for thoughtful, sensitive communication during a time when our nation is reeling from the onslaught of the culture wars. The problem has not been our God or the Bible, but our approach to God and the Bible. As a result of our inauthentic witness, our God has looked all too common rather than as the uncommon God revealed as Jesus Christ. In light of this spiritual and biblical gut check, our witness in the twenty-first century will likely look very different.”

Make no mistake, this is a book where all faiths are ultimately found lacking or incomplete in comparison to Christianity, but Metzger at least engages with what he sees as  positive manifestations of each religion he looks at, and argues that Christians should repent for the sins of the Church. Further, he actually lets representatives from each faith tradition he writes about get the last word. So Unitarian Universalist minister Marilyn Sewell responds on behalf of her church, Prema Raghunath speaks for Hinduism, and Gus diZerega gives a Pagan perspective.

“As we respect and honor Christians who grow from their encounters with their sacred literature and their God, so we request a similar respect in our religions with our text and our Gods.”

“Connecting Christ” is convinced that Christ is the way, but it advocates a far more humble method of spreading the gospel message, one in stark contrast to the ugly smears and triumphal gloating we see from most missionary efforts. The next book begins with a quotation from diZerega, but it’s a very different work, one written by a former Anglican clergyman turned Christian-Druid. “Jesus Through Pagan Eyes: Bridging Neopagan Perspectives with a Progressive Vision of Christ” by Reverend Mark Townsend flips the script to explore how Pagans encounter, work with, think about, honor, and grapple with the figure of Jesus in their lives.

“Reverend Mark Townsend’s remarkable book is truly unlike any other, a thoughtful and deeply moving collection of more than two dozen stories, essays, and interviews about Jesus from today’s most respected Wiccan and Druidic leaders. Contributors such as Maxine Sanders, Christopher Penczak, Janet Farrar, Diana Paxson, Philip Carr-Gomm, Oberon Zell-Ravenheart, and Raven Grimassi explore the historical figure of Jesus in relation to witchcraft, the tarot, goddess worship, and shamanism—while illustrating how this god of the Christian church blesses and inspires many who cannot or will not be part of his “official” family.”

If “Connecting Christ” is important for how it tries to change the way Christians encounter non-Christian faiths in a pluralistic world, “Jesus through Pagan Eyes” may actually be more vital for Christians who seek to understand how our diverse community views their savior. For any orthodox Christian this work will be full of heresies, but it is also paints a portrait of why Christians find it so difficult to “reach” us. Simply put, we encounter Jesus in sometimes radically different ways than they do.

“I see him as a teacher, prophet, miracle worker, and valid deity of the Christian pantheon. Who am I to deny the Christ’s validity?  Although, having known many magicians, Jesus strikes me as far more secure in his being than those magicians.”

The above quote is from Alexandrian Elder Maxine Sanders, who, I feel, encapsulates an important point about both of these books. Townsend asks Sanders what she feels Christians can learn from Pagans, and she replies, “unless they want to, nothing.” I see in these books, an opportunity and a challenge. If Christians want to understand us, and to understand how we view Christians, they have to truly want it first. So many books, with an occasional exception, are essentially lectures by Christians to other Christians about what they believe our religions are about. It’s clear they went in to whatever research or interviews they did wearing blinders, and never took them off. I sense in Metzger a willingness to seriously consider the worldview of other faiths instead of simply knocking down a straw man, and with the release of Townsend’s book, we have a extended meditation from Pagans on the very figure “Connecting Christ” wants us to experience.

I think the two books being released so close together is a kind of kismet, and those invested in a conversation between Pagans and Christians should pick up both and read them together. For my part, I’m trying to arrange a podcast interview with Townsend and Metzger to discuss Jesus, Pagans, and Christianity, and what the path forward from here may be. For the foreseeable future Pagans live in a world dominated by Jesus, while Christians have to increasingly deal with rising religious minorities no longer content to stay on the sidelines, who demand the rights of a pluralistic society. How we converse and understand one another will be vital, and I’m optimistic at the potential dialog created by these two books.

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Unleash the Hounds! (Link Roundup)

Jason Pitzl-Waters —  May 11, 2012 — 60 Comments

There are lots of articles and essays of interest to modern Pagans out there, sometimes more than I can write about in-depth in any given week. So The Wild Hunt must unleash the hounds in order to round them all up.

Torch lighting ceremony in Greece. (Associated Press)

Torch lighting ceremony in Greece. (Associated Press)

- The Olympic flame for the 2012 London games was lit yesterday at the Temple of Hera in Greece, though it did go out briefly during the ceremony. Luckily there was a back-up flame, and the torch started on its week-long journey around Greece. Once in Britain it will make a 70-day circuit in the lead-up to the Olympics. Despite the pageantry, some aren’t impressed, while others made snarky jokes about the flame going out. Still, it’s always nice to see echoes, reminders, that the Olympics are a pagan invention. Created to honor Zeus.

- In a historic first yesterday, Galina Krasskova, a Heathen, gave the opening prayer at a conference on women and indigeny being held at the United Nations. The first Heathen to ever do so. You can find the text of her opening ancestor prayer, here. I could be wrong, but I believe this conference was part of the larger 11th Session of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII), which I mentioned earlier. Congratulations to Galina on this achievement!

- Andrew Brown at The Guardian interviews an unnamed hip vicar who is allegedly dating a Witch, and opines on how to get the post-Christian generation back in the Anglican pews. Quote: “He said the only way was to go straight for the most improbable part of the story. If you’re teaching the virgin birth, point out at once that there were many virgin birth stories around at the time. Caesar Augustus himself was meant to have been the child of a God. So what was different about a God who chose a poor Jewish girl and not a princess for his bride? What changed if the Christian story were true and not the official one?” So, there you go? I guess?

- Congratulations to everyone’s favorite German Catholic mystic, Hildegard of Bingen, now St. Hildegard of Bingen thanks to Pope Benedict and the Catholic Church. Though, a Catholic blogger points out she was already a de facto saint for years. In any case, here’s to the “Sybil of the Rhine.”

- The Epoch Times profiles New York City Councilman, and congressional candidate, Dan Halloran. Not a single peep about his religion, in any context. Luckily, The Wild Hunt spends plenty of time on the subject.

PNC Managing Editor, Cara Schulz with Presidential candidate Gov. Gary Johnson

PNC Managing Editor, Cara Schulz with Presidential candidate Gov. Gary Johnson

- Speaking of politics, former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson recently won the Libertarian Party’s nomination for president. He’s gotten quite a bit of media attention recently, with many wondering if this will be a breakout year for the Libertarians. Pagan Newswire Collective Managing Editor Cara Schulz got to spend the day with Johnson not too long ago, and Schulz followed up with the candidate to see if he regretted courting our community’s vote during a virtual “town hall” session with representatives from Pagan and Hindu media. Quote: “There was no consternation within my campaign about any of the feedback that we got on that event. No consternation.” You can read all of my coverage of Johnson, here.

- An Australian paper reports on two horse killing in England, linking them to the occult, Satanism, and the recent “super moon.” Actual solid evidence for this theory? Zero.

- Peter Berger, writing for The American Interest, defends Andrew Bowen’s Project Conversion, which I’ve mentioned a few times previously here at The Wild Hunt. What I find most interesting about the article is his refutation of “secularization theory—the notion that modernity necessarily brings about a decline in religion.” Berger notes that it “should be replaced by a theory of plurality—a situation in which many religions co-exist and interact with each other.” Sign me up as a proponent of plurality theory.

- TheoFantastique interviews Noel Montague-Etienne Rarignac, author of “The Theology of Dracula: Reading the Book of Stoker as Sacred Text.” The book aims to reread “the horror classic as a Christian text, one that alchemizes Platonism, Gnosticism, Mariology and Christian resurrection in a tale that explores the grotesque.” Sounds very interesting, especially if you’re a fan of Stoker and Dracula.

- An interfaith memorial service for Pagan author, elder, and priestess, De-Anna Alba, also known as Wendy White, will be held tomorrow, Saturday, May 12, 2012 in California at the Church of the Incarnation. De-Anna, author of “The Cauldron of Change: Myths, Mysteries and Magick of the Goddess,” was one of Circle Sanctuary‘s first priestesses and was Circle Sanctuary’s first church secretary. She assisted Selena Fox with publications, events, music, networking, and other endeavors. Selena Fox will give her eulogy and will be among the officiants at De-Anna’s interfaith memorial service this Saturday. Selena also will be among the officiants at De-Anna’s Pagan memorial service and cremains interment at Circle Cemetery in Wisconsin on July 21.

- In a final note, rest in peace Maurice Sendak. Let the wild rumpus start!

That’s it for now! Feel free to discuss any of these links in the comments, some of these I may expand into longer posts as needed.

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Caught In Another Faith’s Crisis

Jason Pitzl-Waters —  April 5, 2012 — 77 Comments

The United States of America is a secular, pluralistic, nation that is home to hundreds of distinct faiths, philosophies, and traditions living, working, and playing side-by-side. Our diversity has often been touted as one of our great strengths, that we don’t succumb to endless internal wars, chaos, and strife, that the American experiment largely “works.” That said, no matter how “pagan” our democracy, our republic, is, we can’t but acknowledge that Christianity has been a driving force in our collective history, and in the history of Western civilization as a whole. Christian colonizers pushed out indigenous peoples and beliefs, and tried to build a new Jerusalem, a “city upon a hill.” However, partially due to the strife between Christian denominations, our nation on its founding erected “a wall of separation” between (Christian) church and state, and our history has experienced waves of disestablishment and religious “awakenings” ever since.

Today, despite the softening Christian character of our nation, our politics and culture are dominated by a Christian narrative (more than 3/4 of Americans identify as Christian), with almost mandatory public shows of Christian piety from the majority of our leaders.

In the cover story of this week’s Newsweek, Andrew Sullivan says that Christianity itself is in crisis, and that the “ability to be faithful in a religious space and reasonable in a political one has atrophied before our eyes.”

“All of which is to say something so obvious it is almost taboo: Christianity itself is in crisis. It seems no accident to me that so many Christians now embrace materialist self-help rather than ascetic self-denial—or that most Catholics, even regular churchgoers, have tuned out the hierarchy in embarrassment or disgust. Given this crisis, it is no surprise that the fastest-growing segment of belief among the young is atheism, which has leapt in popularity in the new millennium. Nor is it a shock that so many have turned away from organized Christianity and toward “spirituality,” co-opting or adapting the practices of meditation or yoga, or wandering as lapsed Catholics in an inquisitive spiritual desert. The thirst for God is still there. How could it not be, when the profoundest human questions—Why does the universe exist rather than nothing? How did humanity come to be on this remote blue speck of a planet? What happens to us after death?—remain as pressing and mysterious as they’ve always been? That’s why polls show a huge majority of Americans still believing in a Higher Power. But the need for new questioning—of Christian institutions as well as ideas and priorities—is as real as the crisis is deep.”

In a live-chat discussing the story, Sullivan explicitly links the crisis of our current political dysfunction with the crisis of Christianity.

“I do not think the crisis of our politics can be resolved without addressing the crisis of American Christianity. Because the corruption of Christianity has corrupted American public life and we must be rid of it to move forward. Hence my coinage of the term Christianist. I use it out of respect for real Christianity, as much as concern about its current partisan politicization.”

Reading the article, and the live-chat, the question came to me: what about us? What about the 22% or so of Americans who aren’t Christian? The “others” and “nones” on those surveys. How do we live in a society where the dominant faith is experiencing a crisis? How do we make our voices heard in a landscape that has devolved into “Democrat Jesus” vs. “Republican Jesus,” where all moral arguments are couched in the language of Christianity?

Where once President Franklin D. Roosevelt might utter the now-unthinkable phrase  “the Catholics and Jews are here under sufferance,” today the spirit of that epithet may as well be launched at Pagans, Hindus, Buddhists, and other faiths that are seen as odd, suspect, or foreign. Meanwhile, Christianity itself grows ever-more polarized and the ranks of those who claim no religion (“nones”) swell to over %15 of the population. The “pagan” answer to this problem might be a better pluralism, embracing that we are entering a new age, and provide more seats at the table for a variety of moral and religious perspectives. To remember a world where embracing many gods wasn’t seen as a weakness, but a strength.

Sadly, most Christians (right and left) see the answer to this crisis as a return to “true” Christianity (whatever that means to them). Sullivan writes the same prescription that hundreds, if not thousands, of Christ-following “doctors” have written before.

“This doesn’t imply, as some claim, the privatization of faith, or its relegation to a subordinate sphere. There are times when great injustices—slavery, imperialism, totalitarianism, segregation—require spiritual mobilization and public witness. But from Gandhi to King, the greatest examples of these movements renounce power as well. They embrace nonviolence as a moral example, and that paradox changes the world more than politics or violence ever can or will. When politics is necessary, as it is, the kind of Christianity I am describing seeks always to translate religious truths into reasoned, secular arguments that can appeal to those of other faiths and none at all. But it also means, at times, renouncing Caesar in favor of the Christ to whom Jefferson, Francis, my grandmother, and countless generations of believers have selflessly devoted themselves.”

I’m truly sympathetic to the version/vision of Christianity Sullivan describes, but no matter how eloquent the words, or how in tune with my personal morality it may be, it still comes down to fixing a problem by doing Christianity “better” (or “purer” if you prefer) in some fashion. The problem with this is the triumphalist thread that runs through the roots of all exclusionary monotheisms. Sullivan himself inadvertently touches that root when he approvingly quotes Catholic monk Thomas Merton (from the “New Seeds of Contemplation”), saying his words are “at the kernel of what I believe is the struggle we are all involved with.”

“Strong hate, the hate that takes joy in hating, is strong because it does not believe itself to be unworthy and alone. It feels the support of a justifying God, of an idol of war, an avenging and destroying spirit. From such blood-drinking gods the human race was once liberated, with great toil and terrible sorrow, by the death of a God Who delivered Himself to the Cross and suffered pathological cruelty of His own creatures out of pity for them. In conquering death He opened their eyes to the reality of a love which asks no questions about worthiness, a love which overcomes hatred and destroys death.

But men have now come to reject this divine revelation of pardons and they are consequently returning to the old war gods, the gods that insatiably drink blood and eat the flesh of men. It is easier to serve the hate-gods because they thrive on the worship of collective fanaticism. To serve the hate-gods, one has only to be blinded by collective passion. To serve the God of Love one must be free, one must face the terrible responsibility of the decision to love in spite of all unworthiness whether in oneself or in one’s neighbor.”

Even at its most poetic, its most refined, the ongoing slur within Christianity of gods that are not their God must always continue. I say that with sadness, because I greatly admire Merton, but even he was not immune to the notion that his faith was an evolutionary and moral step forward in religion. The idea that Christianity can be apolitical, except in times of great injustice, is a kind of folly as there will always be those who interpret the times as times of great injustice. For some, there will always be an “injustice” so long as other moral codes, other gods, dare to hold sway, or even stand their ground. When Sullivan endorses New York Times columnist Ross Douthat’s new book (“Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics”), I can only remember that Douthat is also preoccupied with fighting “Dan Brown’s America” (because, you know, Paganism) and is very, very concerned about Hollywood’s rampant pantheism.

My greatest concern within this crisis is how we tiny communities and groups, we of the 22%, weather the contractions of a post-Christian world being born. So long as our voices, our solutions, are ignored, I fear that we’ll always return to a status quo of Christianity competing with itself in a paper-thin American secularism, thinking its theological and political poles represent diversity of opinion and thought. Only a future of coexistence, not Christian dominance, is tenable for those of us who fall outside that faith’s borders. As the generational plate tectonics shift, as the anxieties of those in power grow, we need more who are willing to reach out their hands, to avoid the worst realities of such shifts. Make no mistake, we are caught in another faith’s crisis, and how that faith treats the “others” and the “nones” will reveal the tenor of our republic for generations to come.

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Pagans and Hindus Together: One Billion Strong

Jason Pitzl-Waters —  March 9, 2012 — 20 Comments

In addition to the ongoing dialog over gender that has defined PantheaCon 2012 for many, there were several other amazing talks, presentations, rituals, and panels that were important to our community, and deserve wider reporting. One of those was a panel discussion between modern Pagans and members of the Hindu American Foundation entitled “Pagans and Hindus Together: One Billion Strong.”

“This panel will discuss ideals held in common by Pagans and Hindus. Panelists will include Patrick McCollum, T. Thorn Coyle, Mihir Meghani and Raman Khanna. Moderated by Amadea. Topics will include: The Sacredness of Nature, The Divine Mother, Advancing Pluralism, and Shared Social Action.”

Author, teacher, and activist T. Thorn Coyle has posted audio of the entire panel at her Elemental Castings podcast page, and I encourage everyone to head over there and download the show. Due to the fact that Patrick McCollum was in India, he couldn’t attend the panel, so I was honored to step in and contribute, weighing in on shared social action between Pagans and Hindus.

Pagans and Hindus Panel. Photo: PNC Bay Area

Pagans and Hindus Panel. Photo: PNC Bay Area

During the panel, I noted several instances where the interests of Hindus and Pagans have coincided, spoke briefly about the 20+ year history of Hindu-Pagan interfaith interactions, and made recommendations as to where our relationship could go in the future. I proposed that perhaps the time had come for our dialog and alliance to take the next step into working directly together in a organization that focused on the rights and concerns of minority religions in the United States. I think that Hindu and Pagans, working with other pluralistic, like-minded, faiths, can create a unique synergy that would enrich both of our communities.

Panelist Mihir Meghani, M.D.; Board Member & Co-Founder of the Hindu American Foundation, touched on our shared commitment to pluralism during the panel, and I think it would be appropriate to quote from some of the guest-post he wrote for The Wild Hunt last year.

“Most importantly, we need to work together more closely. Tremendous challenges loom – the decline in pluralism over thousands of years will take decades if not hundreds of years to reverse. However, challenges present opportunities. The Hindu American Foundation has made pluralism part of its motto “promoting understanding, tolerance and pluralism,” and pluralism is one of the defining characteristics of Hindu and Pagan traditions. Hindus and Pagans can make a lasting contribution to the world by once again promoting pluralism as a core value of society and its individuals – something evidently lacking in the world today in which intolerance is so prominent. We need to challenge ourselves to make pluralism a value similar in respect to values such as honesty and charity. People should be proud to proclaim that they are pluralist – that they revel in and respect the diversity around them. Children should be raised with this value. For the survival of not only our traditions but humanity altogether, we must move from the motto of, “I will tolerate you though you are wrong,” to a true commitment to pluralism.”

These Hindu-Pagan panels at PantheaCon are an important part of building a lasting alliance. I hope that next year we will see even more discussion on concrete moves forward, shared initiatives to make the Hindu voice, and the Pagan voice, heard. I’d like to thank Amadea for inviting to fill Patrick McCollum’s shoes, and my fellow panelists, Thorn, Mihir, and Raman, for an engaging and productive panel. Again, I encourage everyone to download audio of the panel from the Elemental Castings podcast page. There’s so much more there than what I’ve briefly talked about, and it deserves to be heard by any Pagan interested in the future of Hindu-Pagan relations.

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Our “Pagan” President and our Pagan Democracy

Jason Pitzl-Waters —  February 25, 2012 — 33 Comments

Earlier this month, Professor Anouar Majid, author of “We Are All Moors: Ending Centuries of Crusades against Muslims and Other Minorities”, wrote a guest column for Informed Comment. In this column, Majid noted that “democracy and republicanism arose in pagan, polytheistic cultures, ones whose people could live with many gods.” In Majid’s mind, no culture can truly embrace and enjoy the values of democracy, of representative government, without also embracing the “religious pluralism and cultural diversity” inherent in this political model’s building blocks. The Founding Fathers of the United States, from the beginning, were quite cognizant of the fact that the republic they were building would include protections for a diverse religious pluralism that could even encompass a revived polytheism.

“The exclusion of religious tests is by many thought dangerous and impolitic.They suppose that if there be no religious test required, pagans, deists, and Mahometans might obtain offices among us, and that the senators and representatives might all be pagans. Every person employed by the general and state governments is to take an oath to support the former. Some are desirous to know how and by whom they are to swear, since no religious tests are required-whether they are to swear by Jupiter, Juno, Minerva, Proserpine, or Pluto.” – Rev. Henry Abbot, 1788.

For his part, Thomas Jefferson, a key architect of America’s religious freedoms, was proud that our country, in principle, encompassed “the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo, and Infidel of every denomination.” In his mind, whether you worshiped “twenty gods or no God” mattered little to him. However, for many of the Christian denominations and sects who came to North America seeking to build their own religious utopias, their own “city upon a hill,” this secular pluralistic language was something of a bug, not a feature. A necessary concession to forging peace between warring factions, and protecting their adherents in towns and cities where there were in the minority. By the dawning of the 20th century, a new understanding, a unified “tri-faith” America, was slowly formed. America was a “Judeo-Christian” nation made up of Protestants, Jews, and Catholics, and the post-war/cold war era saw “God” (and patriotic ceremonial deism) inserted into our culture as an inoculation against godless communism.

This Judeo-Christian, “Tri-Faith,” consensus started to break apart once the shared danger of a world war faded from our day-to-day lives, and as our religious diversity slowly increased. Soon, splits over what form our pluralistic nation would take erupted in our courtrooms, and the seeds of future culture war(s) were planted. At the heart was a split over whether American pluralism was an “everyone in the pool” affair, letting the best (and biggest) faiths win in the marketplace of our public squares and government halls, or if Jefferson’s notion of a “separation of Church and State” meant that government should work to keep the areas under its control free from anything that could be seen as an endorsement of a certain religion. Those tensions play out to this day. What does a “National Prayer Breakfast” mean in a country that counts Buddhists, atheists, Hindus, Muslims, and Pagans alongside the Jews, Protestants, and Catholics? Do limitations on Christian hegemony make them a persecuted minority? How should religious materials be distributed at school, should they be distributed at all?

Enter into this back-and-forth our first African American president, Barack Obama. Almost from the beginning some of his opponents played up his foreignness. His unusual name, his Kenyan father, the brief time he spent in Indonesia as a child. Soon, the “birther” conspiracy theories, and the “secret Muslim” conspiracy theories started to play out in the darker corners of the Internet, sadly getting far too much attention in mainstream media outlets. To this day, prominent Christians still make veiled allusions to the possible Muslim/non-Christian nature of our president. In addition to this, because no pernicious slur seems to travel alone, there were insinuations that maybe he was worse than simply being a Muslim, who are at least monotheistic believers in God, maybe he had a “pagan” quality as well.

“[Focus Action’s Tom Minnery] pointed out that in the Bible, God worked through pagan rulers such as Nebuchadnezzar, Darius and Cyrus to accomplish his purposes, and that values voters ought to begin praying for President-elect Obama. “God can use any president for his own purposes,” Minnery said.”

Those comments from 2008, which cast Obama as a “pagan” king to be influenced, seem almost quaint and charming compared to more recent statements. For instance, there was conservative “comedian” Steven Crowder, who “joked” this month that Obama “should go back to burning the taxpayer-funded incense to whatever Pagan, foreign deity he’s worshiping.” Then, Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum accused Obama of adhering to a “phony theology.” When pressed on what he meant by that, he elaborated that our president might just be worshiping the Earth.

“…a world view that elevates the earth above man … I was talking about the radical environmentalists. [T]his idea that man is here to serve the earth.”

Washington Times columnist Jeffrey Kuhner doubled down on Santorum’s statements, making explicit what the candidate only hinted at.

“Mr. Santorum’s larger point is that Mr. Obama and his liberal allies have embraced radical environmentalism – a form of neo-paganism. The green movement – exemplified by the hoax of man-made global warming – has degenerated into a pseudo-religion. Environmentalists worship Gaia, Mother Earth, turning it into a secular goddess.”

It’s no longer enough for Obama to branded a secret Muslim, to question his professed Christian faith, he must be a (secular) “neo-pagan,” because then he would be truly beyond the pale for any Christian voter. As influential conservative evangelical Christian, and former presidential candidate, Gary Bauer noted in a recent “thought experiment” for USA Today, voters should  ”support policies that align with their values,” except in once instance.

“I wouldn’t vote for a pagan, I’d vote for a Catholic or a Jew whose policies reflect the traditional understanding of marriage and defend the sanctity of human life much more readily than I would vote for the man next to me in the pew who doesn’t support those things.”

Of course, Obama is a Christian, just like every other president we’ve ever had (though I suppose you could argue that Jefferson was never a proper Christian, but that’s a different conversation). However, these misguided critics are right in one small aspect: Obama is a “pagan” president, as is every other president elected to the office.

A collection of lucky charms carried by Obama during his presidential run.

A collection of lucky charms carried by Obama during his presidential run.

Every president, every politician, who takes the oath to uphold our Constitution, are taking an oath that the founders knew would allow for men and women of every faith (or even no faith) to someday take their place among our leadership. They are taking an oath on a document crafted by men who are products of the Enlightenment, whose thinkers looked to ancient pagan thinkers, politicians, and philosophers for wisdom and guidance, unencumbered by the filter of the Christian church. The religious pluralism of the United States of America is a pluralism that had its first breaths in ancient Greece, and later ancient Rome, where a variety of gods, goddesses, cults, sects, and traditions had to live together in a civil society. To return to Professor Majid’s essay, “one can’t imagine the American Republic without the Founding Fathers’ knowledge of Greece and Rome.” Democracy, republicanism, are core pagan inventions, and no matter how Christian the hand who steers the ship of State, those ideals remain lest our institutions crumble.

The reason we haven’t had a theocratic takeover, a Handmaid’s Tale nightmare scenario, is because at a gut level, we as a people understand this. We know that the rhetoric of a “Christian nation” is populist fodder for pews and rallies, a mantra repeated to ease the fears of strange neighbors with strange practices. To enact the religious fever dreams of a Santorum or a Bachmann would mean the end of America itself, because a vital tie to what makes democracies work would be severed. So while some like to demonize our pluralism, they should thank their God for our “pagan” institutions that allow them the luxury of their easy prejudices. Those who damn Obama as a “pagan” should be thankful that the pagans of ages past created the mechanisms to protect their freedoms should all their conspiracy theories prove true.  If the political wishes of certain conservatives are realized and a “real” Christian president is elected in 2012, know that this individual will be just as “pagan” as Obama.

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The Audacity of Jon Huntsman’s Pluralism

Jason Pitzl-Waters —  January 7, 2012 — 19 Comments

There are a lot of reasons, and a lot of commentary, for why Jon Huntsman isn’t a front-runner in the Republican presidential nominee race; he’s seen as too liberal, or he’s too nice, he’s a Mormon not named Romney, or maybe it was that bizarre first campaign ad. What hasn’t been alleged, until now, is that he isn’t sufficiently Christian, and might be a Chinese “Manchurian candidate.” However, thanks to a racist attack ad that’s so extreme it almost plays as a parody, those allegations are now removed from conspiratorial toxic message boards and white supremacist conventions and given their fifteen minutes in the 2012 presidential race.

The ad begins asking of Huntsman, “The Manchurian Candidate,” “What’s he hiding?” It features “traditional” Chinese music and clips of Huntsman doing things in China: speaking Mandarin, taking interviews from Chinese press, walking around in China– you get the idea. It then asks a series of questions during the montage like, “American values, or Chinese?” and “Weak on China? Wonder why?” It also takes a detour to slam him for being Mormon (“A man of faith?”) before the coup de grace, a doctored photo of Huntsman in what appears to be Maoist military garb. Essentially, it makes “Willie Horton” look like Will.I.Am’s “Yes We Can” ad.

The ad was placed by an independent group calling itself “New Hampshire Liberty 4 Paul,” and was quickly disavowed by the Ron Paul campaign, who said it should be taken down (Paul supporters have also traveled down the rabbit hole of trying to prove the ad was a “false flag” designed by Huntsman to discredit their candidate). Naturally, the ad was condemned by a variety of critics, including the Hindu American Foundation, who took exception to the implication that Huntsman raising his adopted Indian daughter Asha within a Hindu context was something that should be attacked.

The Huntsmans with daughter Asha Bharati

The Huntsmans with daughter Asha Bharati

”This deplorable ad is blatantly racist and religiously intolerant, and crosses all lines of acceptable political discourse,” said Suhag Shukla, Esq., HAF’s Managing Director and Legal Counsel. “Instead of vilifying Governor Hunstman, he should be applauded for being open minded enough to raise his adopted daughter as a Hindu.”

This ugly ad, however, does highlight qualities about Jon Huntsman that I think are admirable, and speak to the best qualities of our nation. The willingness to put duty above party affiliation by accepting the position of Chinese ambassador from President Obama, the willingness to learn a second language in order to better communicate our values, and understand another culture’s values, the recognition that diplomacy can be a strength, and a commitment to religious pluralism that includes raising an adopted daughter “to learn about and appreciate her native culture and the faiths associated with it.” I may not agree with Jon Huntsman on a number of issues, but if he were elected president I wouldn’t constantly worry that he would try to imprint his beliefs on the many religious minorities that call this country home, something that can’t be said for several other candidates.

Indeed, from all accounts Huntsman’s personal religious life is a mirror of America’s unique mix of faiths and philosophies, far from the political will of the Republican Party’s Christian conservative base, who see any non-adherence to a certain religio-political rigorousness as a heresy that must be punished at the ballot box. Just read this excerpt from a National Review article on Huntsman’s religious outlook.

Last year, Huntsman told Fortune that he receives “satisfaction from many different types of religions and philosophies” and doesn’t consider himself to be “overly religious.” (ANew York Times article last week noted that Huntsman’s comments to Fortune made a splash in his home state; “many Utahans can recite from memory” Huntsman’s quote, according to the Times.) In March, the Washington Post reported that “Huntsman’s relatives and friends describe him frequently as an independent thinker, unbeholden to any church or party doctrine,” and that “many Republicans faithful to the church in Utah dismissed Huntsman as a ‘Jack Mormon,’ a derogatory term referring to a non-practicing Mormon.”

As the Pew Forum has pointed out, “the religious beliefs and practices of Americans do not fit neatly into conventional categories.” 35% of Americans attend more the one place of worship, and sizable minorities mix Western and Eastern forms of religion into their daily lives. Huntsman and his “satisfaction from many different types of religion” is mainstream, yet every election cycle the Christian character, and only the Christian character, of each candidate is scrutinized. Any hint that a candidate might enjoy, or even tolerate, the practices the other faiths instantly make him suspect, and a target for attack. If you need an example, just look at what happened when Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear, who is an ardent Christian, attended a traditional Hindu blessing.

If Jon Huntsman’s campaign has little chance of succeeding, and there’s every indication that’s the case, then perhaps he could be that prophetic voice for American pluralism within the Republican Party. That conservative politics shouldn’t be hijacked by an all-or-nothing strain of Christian belief, that melding religious orthodoxy to political stances can become toxic if left unchecked. Perhaps Huntsman could be the voice of all those Americans who attend multiple churches, or have children who are Wiccan, or Buddhist, or atheists, or those who like to do Yoga and enjoy reading their horoscopes. You know, normal Americans, the “mushy middle” that actually gives some credence to our country being a “melting pot” of ideas and cultures. Maybe Huntsman can embrace the audacity of his pluralistic life and bring us something new.

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